DVD Review: Your Mommy Kills Animals!
Published May 19, 2008
The FBI recently identified animal rights and environmental activists as the nation's biggest domestic terrorism threat. I know, it sounded far-fetched to me, too. But after I watched Your Mommy Kills Animals, Curt Johnson’s documentary peek into the world of animal rights activism, the claim sounded a little more plausible.
Not that Johnson is anti-animal rights. Or pro-animal rights. Or maybe he is. But you wouldn’t know it to watch this documentary. With an artistic eye that is about as close to objective as is humanly possible, Johnson shows that the issues surrounding animal rights are far from black and white. It’s not all PETA versus the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
For one thing, there’s the difference between “animal rights” and “animal welfare.” People who support the latter think animals should be treated humanely. Supporters of the former think animals should be treated like humans. That is, we don’t have the moral right to eat, perform tests on, or use the labor of animals. Once you get into the territory of animal rights, there are further distinctions. There are peaceful demonstrators. There are arsonists and thieves. And there are people in between.
Your Mommy Kills Animals takes its name from a PETA pamphlet aimed at children. The pamphlet encourages children to ask their mothers not to wear fur, because the fur industry is bad for animals. It goes on to suggest that kids “keep [their] doggie or kitty friends away from Mommy – she’s an animal killer!”
PETA is not the most extreme group under examination. The messages of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA (SHAC USA) put the shock value of PETA’s Mommy pamphlet in the shade. Footage of burning buildings and ski mask-clad “liberators” who break into research facilities to release test subjects are interspersed with interview clips. In one scene, ALF member Rod Coronado explains to a group of American University students how to make an explosive device out a milk jug, a sponge, oil and gasoline, and an incense stick (“Sandalwood works nice,” he jokes.)
For Coronado and other extreme activists, the end seems to justify almost any means. Trauma surgeon Jerry Vlasak is a spokesperson for “several extreme animal rights groups.” Vlasak compares committing violence against animal abusers to physically stopping someone from kicking your dog.
“Here are people who are abusing animals, who are getting paid to abuse animals,” he says. “You ask them to stop, they don’t want to stop. You tell them to stop, they still don’t want to stop. So you stop them, using whatever means are necessary. I think that’s a morally defensible argument.”
Amanda Bittle studies Professional Writing at the University of Oklahoma. She loves water slides, Indian food, and her pet cornsnake, Pandora.
- DVD Review: Your Mommy Kills Animals!
- Published: May 19, 2008
- Type: Review
- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Documentary
- Writer: Amanda Bittle
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7 Things You Didn't Know About PeTA
1. PeTA has stated repeatedly that their goal is "total animal liberation." This means no pets, no meat, no milk, no zoos, no circuses, no fishing, no hunting, no farming, no leather, and no animal testing for lifesaving medicines.
2. PeTA has given tens of thousands of dollars to convicted arsonists and other violent criminals.
3. PeTA funds the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine an animal-rights organization that presents itself as an unbiased source for nutritional information and has links to violent animal-rights groups called SHAC and ALF.
4. PeTA has used their contributors tax-exempt donations to fund the North American Earth Liberation front and the Animal Liberation Front, FBI-certified domestic terrorist groups responsible for fire bombs and death threats.
5. PeTA regularly targets kids as early as elementary school with anti-meat and anti-milk propaganda. They are totally opposed to traditional farming methods.
6. PeTA spends less than one percent of its $13 million budget actually caring for animals. PeTA kills animals.
7. PeTA has repeatedly attacked groups like the March of Dimes, the Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the American Cancer Society, for conducting animal testing to find cures for birth defects and life-threatening diseases.
source: www.consumerfreedom.com
www.petakillsanimals.com
www.animalscam.com
www.naiaonline.org
If you really care about animals, you'll go vegan.
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My complements on a good article.
I'd like to extend the crucial point Amada made about the difference between Animal Rights and Animal Welfare.
The AR ideology hinges precariously on the moral equivalency of humans and animals: to the AR person, the life of a human and that of an animal are of equal moral value, and, as Amanda pointed out, to an AR advocate, if it is morally or ethically unacceptable to do something to a human, it is no less so to do it to an animal.
Indeed, AR groups believe that discrimination on the basis of species differences ("speciesism") is as morally reprehensible as racism, ageism, sexism, etc.
The human/animal moral equivalency is why AR activist and erstwhile self-appointed spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front Dr. Steven Best said he'd save his dog from a burning house before he'd save a human stranger. http://tinyurl.com/cobho
Why? Because to Dr. Best (and other folks who understand and buy into the AR ideology), both lives are of equal moral value, and his dog brings HIM more pleasure than the human stranger -- say your child, parent, spouse or sib -- brings HIM.
If this horrifies you, keep in mind that the logic is flawless, IF you accept the assumption that that both the dog's life and that of the human are of equal moral value.
But here's the fly in the AR logical ointment.
PeTA, the pre-eminent AR group, kills upwards of 80% of the animals it takes into its Norfolk VA "shelter", a far higher percentage than the impoverished other shelters in the area. And, AR groups (including Vlasak's own ADL-LA) advocate the spaying and neutering of dogs and cats, ostensibly to fight pet overpopulation.
If AR people really believe that humans and animals are morally equivalent, how can they justify all this killing, spaying and neutering of dogs and cats unless they support killing, spaying and neutering humans for the same reasons they favor doing so to animals?
The AR people have either fatally undermined their own argument of human/animal moral equivalent . . . or more disturbingly, would kill and forcibly sterilize human beings on the same moral/ethical basis they do animals.